Company Gets In Trouble For Ads Promoting Fake Sick Days

from the are-you-serious? dept

Apparently, despite all the clever humor to come out of the UK over the years, the folks who work at the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK have no sense of humor at all. Tech giant Benq started an ad campaign this summer suggesting that with their products, your "bogus sick days will be 33% more enjoyable." Not laugh out loud funny, but an amusing little tagline to get some interest. Apparently, the ASA is scared to death that people will take this seriously and start calling in sick just to mess around with Benq computers -- because we're sure that before this ad came out no one ever faked a sick day.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 5 Aug 2004 @ 7:00am

    Sick Dayz are a lot more complicated these days

    Just realized the my company doesn't offer sick days (isn't this illegal?). Instead they supposedly offer an "above industry standard" amount of leave (since when is 2 weeks a year above industry standards?). All sick days are taken out of accruded leave. the office space in which I work requires that I take time off from work if I have a obvious communicable illness (cold).

    So, do I bill the time on my time card or not?

    My boss can't even answer that question without stepping squarely into a gray-zone. Meanwhile the bean-counter in Utah go balistic every friken instance when a time card hasn't been filled out for a particular day.

    Still, it's better than the last company I quit. Those numbskulls that it was funny to have a "use or lose" leave policy (burried deep in the fine print of the employment contract) in addition to a hypothetical tax (on top of "regular" tax). That's the *LAST* time I *EVER* work a full year without taking any leave... and it's the last time I'll ever work for those motherfsckers (well, at least as long as KPMG is doing their accounting/psudo-hr).

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.